It's a few years old, but I recently read Masaru Emoto's book "The Hidden Messages in Water" - quite an astonishing read. In it, Dr.Emoto experimented with how water crystals were formed when they were "stimulated" by different words or music. He found that when beautiful music was played (e.g. some Chopin , or "Yesterday" by the Beatles) as water was crystalizing, the actual crystals formed were complex and gorgeous. When heavy metal was played, the resulting crystals were a mess. Another experiment involved typing words on paper and wrapping them around a bottle of water. When the water was cooled to freezing point, Emoto took the crystals and examined them. Crystals formed from the stimulus of words like "wisdom", "let's do it", "I'm sorry" or "I love you" were perfectly formed and lovely. When the water was shown phrases like "you fool!" and "you make me sick", no crystals were formed or they were unrecognizable. Amazing stuff, especially if you think that we're made up of more than 60% water.
But as I flicked through the different experiments conducted, I found myself wanting to see one which stimulated the crystals with different brand names. Would crystals stimulated by "Whole Foods" or "Kashi" be beautiful and lovely and ones stimulated by "Exxon" or "Marlboro" be all deformed and gnarly? We're frequently being challenged by clients to come up with new research methods....how about "Brand Crystalization Research"?
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That would be something worth seeing.
With mother nature being so honest, it surely could beat the hell out of so many focus groups.
And while we're at it, i came up with a few more "alternative" research methods:
- geomancy (throwing the product line on the sand and interpreting the signs)
- Phrenology (studying CMOs heads)
On a more serious tone, i guess these ideas could be a start for an ad campaign.
I'm with Armando on this one... might as well get monkeys to jump around on the keyboard. Out of curiousity, did Emoto give any indication about his scientific rigor? Nice to see he's a "Dr" but I'd be curious to know if these experiments were lab-controlled, high volume, etc., etc., etc.
By the way, I've tried to study CMO's heads and I might prefer to go with the snow flake method!
Though Toph, a thousand monkeys jumping on a thousand keyboards would eventually write the perfect brand brief!
Does anyone else find it ironic that the gentleman's name is "Doctor Emoto," and his work centers on the emotionally-charged energies of matter? Now THAT'S marketing...
That or he is some kind of Bond-villain
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